Remember why they set up DOGE? Now Trump just wasted 11 billion dollars in Iran war

President Trump’s administration has estimated that the initial six days of the war on Iran cost the United States at least $11.3 billion. That number is insane, especially when you consider that just last year, the administration championed significant federal cost-cutting through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Per Reuters, that $11.3 billion figure doesn’t even cover the total cost of the war, but it’s what lawmakers received when they pushed for more information about the conflict. The White House is likely to ask Congress for more funding soon, with some officials anticipating a minimum request of $50 billion. 

This current spending is a stark contrast to the administration’s earlier focus on trimming federal expenses. Last year, Elon Musk made headlines defending DOGE’s plans to slash “waste” across federal agencies. He even famously posed with a chainsaw to symbolize DOGE’s aggressive cost-cutting efforts, which Trump had requested. The fanfare around DOGE has certainly quieted down, but the repercussions are still being felt.

Whether spending or saving, we, the common people, are the losers

USA Today reported that DOGE’s website, last updated in October, claimed $110 billion in savings from canceled agreements across every state, over 64 agencies, and in federal bodies. Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said these contract reviews brought much-needed accountability back to the federal government. However, the full extent of DOGE’s impact, both direct and indirect, on Americans and vulnerable populations globally will likely never be fully understood. 

One striking example of the impact was in the tiny Native Alaskan village of Kipnuk, where a flood mitigation grant was canceled. The project, recommended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was meant to stabilize a riverbank and combat erosion from thawing permafrost. 

Just five months later, Kipnuk was slammed by disastrous storm surges and flooding from Typhoon Halong. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin defended the cancellation, suggesting the project wouldn’t have been completed in time to prevent the damage anyway. This angered Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said, “I am outright mad that some have suggested that it is a waste of taxpayer dollars to protect Alaskan communities.”

Beyond specific communities, these cuts affected thousands of contractors, grant recipients, long-planned projects, and ongoing research studies, including needed medical studies and cancer research. It affected state governments, local governments, universities and colleges, and even Indigenous peoples and tribes. USAID saw the biggest cuts, and public health experts argue that shutting down the agency came at an estimated cost of 788,000 lives. 

Now, DOGE is no longer alive, and the U.S. faces an $11.3 billion bill for the first week of the Iran war. There are also concerns about depleting military stocks because of Iran’s dramatically cheaper drones. Then, when you step back and see what the Department of War just spent in the last month, you begin to get a suspicious feeling that DOGE was never about saving. It was just about shuffling the funds to what this Administration thinks matters. 

Spoiler alert, it is definitely not us.